14 May 2025

grief

 

This week's theme is Grief. 


I invite you to choose a subject for a poem from among what you grieve--or maybe your subject will be grief itself.  

We grieve people we love who have left or died, victims of war, pets missed, and trees, lands and other live beings destroyed in myriad ways.  Animals grieve, too.  The grief of life for life shortened or lost is legendary.  

We may also carry grief about relationships and jobs we've left, governments that disappoint, and years that have escaped us, among other things.  

We try to come to terms with grief so that we can live with it, and that too is a subject for poetry.  

There may be too much grief to talk about--but that is where poetry is helpful. Choose from among the vast possibilities, and write a poem to share here.

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For inspiration:

Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden 

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
 
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
 
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
 
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

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to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

VIDEO WARNING: This video shows children dying in Gaza.



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Please link one poem that is your response to this prompt.  
After you link your poem, please visit others,
and
Don't forget to include this link in your post.

16 comments:

  1. Wow, Susan, that video is powerful. Thanks for sharing it. Heartbreaking. It is unfathomable how the world is now. Grief, fear and suffering everywhere you look. "Leaders" with dollar signs where their hearts and minds should be.

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    1. Thank you, Sherry. I worried that it was too intense to show. But given how the killing continues, it is what it is. I have to look at it.

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    2. We poets bear witness. I cant believe how things have changed from when we first started blogging. It is scary.

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  2. This topic did help me so much in my struggle to get out of the darkness, Susan. I felt a kind of relief and release in writing the words. Thank you so much.

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    1. Bless you, Sumana! Thank you for telling me.

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  3. Hello, dear poets! I am looking forward to reading your poetic responses to this prompt.

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  4. What a powerful video, Susan. The song and pictures are chilling.

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    1. And yes, reality is reality. Life is intense today, not always pretty.

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    2. Thank you, Mary,

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  5. Replies
    1. And thank you for today's amazing poem!

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  6. I could hardly bear to look at the video, Susan. but I don't want to look away from the suffering, if only to make me pray all the more for it to end.

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    1. Yes. And it has gotten worse now that starvation is also a killer. Praying for everyone!

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  7. This is such a powerful prompt I wanted to write something new in response but am a bit unwell right now. I've reblogged some older poems and will visit all your poems tomorrow when, hopefully, I'll be feeling a bit more with it. Suzanne - Wayfaring blog - Wordpress

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    1. My response to your poems seems written by "anonymous." I'm so glad you brought them!

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  8. What a powerful video. I am too familiar of late with grief. Thanks for the prompt Susan.

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